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Near Field Communication (NFC) is steadily making headway in the U.S. for sharing data and music among smartphones, but the technology faces years of slow growth as a replacement for physical wallets.

NFC will take a minimum of three more years to grab hold as a technology that enables so-called mobile wallets as a replacement for credit cards and cash in the U.S., according to a consensus of five analysts. And by "grab hold," these analysts mean being used by only 10% of mobile phone users to make digital purchases.

Gartner analyst Avivah Litan predicts that NFC payments will hit the 10% threshold in 2015, compared to the process of SMS (texting) payments that is expected to represent 50% of mobile payment volume globally in that same year. "We're still on the edge when it comes to NFC innovation," Litan says. "It will take a decade before it's mainstream across the globe."

(For an explanation of how NFC works, a short history of the technology and some information about alternatives in the U.S., see "A short history of NFC.")

iPhone 5 and the decision to omit NFC

Dozens of new smartphones that run Android, BlackBerry and Windows, and that include an NFC chip, launched last year. But Apple notably did not put NFC in its new iPhone 5 when the phone launched in September. That move "surely had a significant detrimental impact on industry adoption of NFC," Litan says, given Apple's influence in the mobile market.

Some NFC predictions

Juniper Research: Global NFC mobile payment transactions will be almost $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months. (Prediction made in June 2011.)

Yankee Group: The 7 million NFC-enabled phones in 2011 will grow to 203 million in 2015. (June 2011)

IE Market Research: NFC will constitute around a third of all global mobile payments -- estimated at $1.13 trillion -- in 2014. (July 2010)

Frost & Sullivan: 863 million units, or 53% of new handsets, will be NFC-enabled in 2015. The total payment value for NFC globally will exceed 110 billion euros (around $145 billion) in 2015. (February 2011)

Celent: There will be 169 million users of mobile contactless payment in China in 2013, making China the largest mobile-payments market in the world. (November 2010)

IDC: Worldwide mobile payments via NFC are projected to grow from $600 million in 2012 to $273 billion in 2017.

Juniper Research: Almost 300 million, or 1 in 5, smartphones worldwide will be NFC-enabled by 2014. (April 2011)

Apple justified the move by saying that consumers already could use its Passbook app, which shows barcodes on the display, instead of NFC. The barcodes contain information that can be scanned by optical readers to let users board planes and redeem movie tickets -- tasks that Apple notes are "the kinds of things consumers need today."

In other words, Apple implies, customers don't need or want an NFC smartphone for making credit card transactions -- yet. Barcode scanning is used by Starbucks nationwide -- and has been more recently adopted by Dunkin' Donuts -- to subtract dollars from a virtual card on a smartphone that was previously loaded with cash.

Some have criticized Apple for omitting NFC from the iPhone 5, which has led to a widespread reassessment of NFC's immediate future, especially in the U.S.

Still, nearly all analysts predict Apple will eventually include NFC in the iPhone 6 or beyond, noting that Apple is steadily acquiring technologies to do so, including a fingerprint and NFC identity recognition system from Authentec.